The President of the United States, Donald Trump, has ordered the Department of Defense to “immediately” begin testing nuclear weapons, in response, he has said, to the testing programs of other countries such as Russia and China.
“Due to other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the War Department to begin testing our nuclear weapons on equal terms,” the president wrote in Truth Social, less than an hour before meeting in South Korea with Chinese President Xi Jinping as part of the APEC summit.
The announcement represents an unprecedented turn in US nuclear policy, which had maintained a moratorium since 1992, when then-President George HW Bush suspended tests after the end of the Cold War. The White House has not yet clarified what the tests will consist of or when they will be carried out.
